Back to the Future }} Corporate pressure ended
postal banking in 1968. It’s time to bring it back
One of the very first things that the new Dominion of Canada did as a country, way back in April 1868, was create a postal bank. The idea was to create a banking system that Canadians could access easily — and to serve customers that the established banks of the time showed little interest in, namely lower-income customers and those in remote communities. Successful lobbying by the banking industry led to the elimination of the postal bank in 1968. Virtually all of the key players in our current postal system — Canada Post; Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) and the Canadian Postmasters and Assistants Association (CPAA) — have examined the idea of re-establishing a postal bank. Canada Post Corporation, an arm’s-length Crown corporation, conducted a four-year study on postal banking in the early 2000s. For reasons as yet unexplained by the corporation, 711 of the 801 pages of the report were blacked out, and all those pages were revealed only after a freedom of information request. One sentence on postal banking did survive the initial redaction: Canada Post describes the possibility of a postal bank as a “win-win strategy.” (Canada Post did not respond to questions posed by the Advocate on the study.) The last time the House of Commons discussed postal banking was in October 22, 2018 — which happened to be the day that members of CUPW began rotating strikes. The motion was defeated two days later. Kawartha Lakes-Haliburton Brock MP Jamie Schmale voted against the motion, which proposed a special committee to establish a plan for a postal banking system. In an interview with the Advocate Schmale said that while he too was concerned with access to banking for rural residents, he said the motion as stated “presented postal banking as a done deal” with no other options being considered. There is a perception amongst some critics of postal banking that the idea is just a way to save jobs in an industry that is going through severe flux with the decline of letter mail and the increase of package delivery. Brenda McCauley, president of the CPAA (which represents more than 11,000 workers in more than 3,200 locations) says that postal banking is about more than jobs. McCauley acknowledges that postal banking would address job security and possible growth for Canada Post. It would also address the gender wage gap (the CPAA’s membership is 95 per cent female nationally and 97.6 per cent female in Ontario). But according to McCauley, “postal banking is bigger than that. It’s an important issue. It’s important to rural Canadians.”
TREVOR HUTCHINSON, CONTRIBUTING EDITOR
What is postal banking? Quite simply, it’s being able to do one’s banking at the local post office. Imagine having the option to have basic banking services like savings and chequing accounts and bill payments right at the local post office. Later, services like mortgages, loans, and investments, could be added. Postal banking existed in Canada up until 1968 until Canada decided to hand more power over to the private sector and the big banks.
CONT’D ON PAGE 12
www.lindsayadvocate.ca
11
